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New Indian new Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chosen a daring former spy with years of experience in dealing with Pakistan as his national security adviser, a move officials say signals a more muscular approach to New Delhi's traditional enemy.

The choice of Ajit Doval, alongside former Indian army chief General V.K. Singh as a federal minister for the northeast region, underscores plans to revamp national security that Modi says became weak under the outgoing government.

The two top-level appointments, reporting directly to Modi, point to a desire to address what are arguably India's two most pressing external security concerns - Pakistan and China, both of which, like India, have nuclear arms.

Doval, a highly decorated officer renowned for his role in dangerous counter-insurgency missions, has long advocated tough action against militant groups, although operations he has been involved in suggest a level of pragmatism.

In the 1980s, he smuggled himself into the Golden Temple in the city of Amritsar, from where Sikh militants were later flushed out. And he infiltrated a powerful guerrilla group fighting for independence from India in the northeastern state of Mizoram. The group ultimately signed a peace accord.

Doval was also on the ground in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when an Indian Airlines plane from Kathmandu was hijacked by Pakistan-based militants on Christmas Eve, 1999. The crisis was resolved when top militants were freed in exchange for hostages.

"Doval is an out-of-the-box thinker," said an Intelligence Bureau officer with long years of service in Kashmir and other Indian hotspots. "Expect him to shake things up."

The official, who did not want to be named, said he expected the new security team to push for a rapid expansion of border infrastructure and a streamlining of intelligence services, which still function in isolation and often impede one other.

Singh has declared his priority is to develop the northeast in order to narrow the gap with Chinese investment in roads and railways on its side of the frontier.

India is also creating a new mountain corps and beefing up border defences, although that initiative has stalled.

Doval, 69, formerly head of the Intelligence Bureau domestic spy agency, will be national security adviser, only the second officer from the intelligence community to hold the post.

By contrast, predecessor Shiv Shankar Menon is a member of the elite Indian Foreign Service - an expert on China and nuclear security known for his formidable intellect.

Doval did not say what his priorities would be after his appointment was announced on Friday. But in previous conversations on the record as head of a right-wing think tank in New Delhi, he said the new government must lay down core security policies, one of which was "zero tolerance" for acts of violence.

Modi's other key appointment, retired general Singh, may inject new urgency into India's plan to establish a corps of 80,000 troops along its border with China in the northeast.

A massive programme to build roads and upgrade airfields in the remote area was also cleared by the ousted Congress party, but has lagged.

Singh, who won a parliamentary seat for the BJP in the election, is expected to accelerate the process through the defence bureaucracy, helped by a direct reporting line to the all-powerful prime minister.

"Development of the northeast will be my top priority," he told reporters after taking charge on Thursday.

China claims more than 90,000 sq km of land disputed by New Delhi in the eastern sector of the Himalayas, including most of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China continues to call South Tibet.